SAM 2020.2 Windows Agent Woes

jd-nng

Figured I'd try Thwack as support seems to have no idea what is going on. I'm sure someone else has to have run in to this.

New SAM 2020.2 installation. Deploying Windows agents to a mix of Windows Server 2016 and 2019 machines. I've been trying to slim down how much data is sent from Orion to the agent on initial deployment and followed the prereq guide and support guidance but none of it seems to help.

Current process based on what support told me to do:

1. Install .NET 4.8
2. Install MS VC 2013 x86 and x64; not covered in SW guide is that it must be MS VC v12.0.305.01 and not the newer revision!
3. Install Orion Agent  [using the MSI+MST method]

It seems the agents still have to download their plugins and despite the plugin folder being ~360mb, it sends north of 1gb of data to the new agent from the Orion server according to NTA stats. This seems a bit extreme. I've had as high as 11GB sent to a site with only 8 agents!

My sites are 1.5M to 10M connections so you can see my dilemma. I want to get as much as possible bundled so it can be sent over the wire in a controlled manner, ie with my deployment tools. 

Any suggestions? I really hate that the "agent" package does not actually contain all the things needed for the agent! That seems like a miss on the product team's part. I get not having MS VC and .NET but it is missing the plugins and clearly something else. 

Thanks

jd-nng

Update for anyone that comes across this.

You can prestage the plugins folder if you grab it from an agent running the same operating system. Makes for a fun deployment package but it works. I reduced initial agent download from 600-1000MB down to 60MB on average.

Still pending support on what that 60MB is exactly.